A food fight over aid program

After a decade of foreign wars, who’d have thought Washington would now be fighting over something called “Food for Peace”?

Yet almost half the House Republicans voted against funding the Eisenhower-era icon in the previous Congress. And Wednesday found Rajiv Shah — the bright young star at the United States Agency for International Development — promoting wholesale changes that threaten old alliances with American farmers and mariners.

Text Size

-

+

reset

“America’s agricultural bounty and generosity have fed well over a billion people in more than 150 countries since 1954,” Shah testified in back-to-back appearances before the Senate Foreign Relations and House Appropriations committees. “But while the world has changed significantly, our hallmark food assistance program has not.”

Behind all this is President Barack Obama’s plan to revamp international food aid to allow more flexible, cash purchases overseas — rather than commodity shipments from the U.S.

About $1.47 billion from the Food for Peace program would be reallocated to three accounts, the biggest designated for emergency assistance. The White House promises that 55 percent of the funds would still go to buy and ship American commodities, but that’s a big drop from today and could be ruinous for some carriers.

It’s not a fight that will ever capture the same headlines as gun control or immigration reform. But it’s a real test of the president’s muscle in two gritty corners of Congress where Obama rarely goes: appropriations and agriculture.

The result is something of a culture clash among the president’s own allies — with each side quick to condemn the intentions of the other.

As USAID chief, the 40-year-old Shah is Obama’s point man, a rare physician-trained administrator and veteran of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

His testimony Wednesday came as the Senate confirmed a second Gates global development veteran, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, as White House budget director. And Burwell’s prior legislative experience in the Clinton administration makes her an important partner now in trying to make headway in Congress.

Time and again Wednesday, Shah returned to the phrase: “a more modern and science-based way.” But this youth and enthusiasm are matched against real political misgivings among traditional allies of the president.

Indeed, even before the president’s budget was released this month, Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski had signed on to a February letter resisting changes in the current Food for Peace structure. Compromises must be found by mid-May, when the Maryland Democrat must begin to set the allocations for the fiscal 2014 spending bills.

Even among those supportive of the reforms, there’s a fear that the White House may be moving too fast given the turmoil surrounding the larger budget process.

“From a public policy standpoint, it makes very good sense,” said Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.). “But they want us to take a leap of faith that this will all work … And I want a lot more assurances, a lot more assurances.”

Established in 1954, the Food for Peace program didn’t get its full name until John F. Kennedy’s administration in the 1960s. But in the decades since, it has grown to be a staple of American foreign policy with average annual costs of $1.8 billion since 2002.